Individuals and businesses across many industries use containers to store documents, materials, personal items, memorabilia, and the like. A common container for such use is a box, typically having a lid, typically made of a corrugated paperboard or cardboard. Such file boxes are used in the hundreds of millions to hold and store any and all sorts of items that can fit within them. Typically, these boxes carry up to forty pounds or more of materials within them.
In such previously known boxes the standard, slit handles or grips found in the container portion are well known. Conventional corrugated paperboard boxes having a handle opening and a lid have seen few changes since the introduction of that style of box over seventy years ago.
There are numerous circumstances where the use of a container box may want to prevent or deter other persons from accessing the contents of the box, after documents or other articles are placed inside the container box and a lid is placed over the top opening of the container. The contents placed into the box may include documents, articles, devices, or other things, related to a business, medical, personal or legal matter, that are used in businesses, offices, homes, home offices, and file storage facilities, and which may be of a confidential, secret, sensitive, personal, or private nature. In some circumstances, the user might want to have such documents, articles, etc. in a container with a lid that is securely closed and locked so that access by unauthorized persons is prevented, unless the lock or integrity of the box or lid is breached using a tool. However, in many situations, the user may want to deter access by an unauthorized person, or to provide some means of securing the lid in a closed position on the box that indicates tampering or breach of the securing means.
When a human user lifts and holds a commonly used and known corrugated box with handle or grip openings in the opposed sides, a number of changes immediately occur to that person's body. When the user holds that known box (or other containers similar to it) with her arms extended, the top of the box and/or lid of the box will lie at an angle (from horizontal) against the legs or lower torso of the holder. Because the box is weighted, the human user's center of gravity is shifted from her natural position within her body, to a point outside of her body to compensate for the box's weight. This shift of the user's center of gravity shifts the user's naturally weighted stance from her heels to the front of her feet and along her toes. Such orientation can be painful and is not sustainable over time. This is true because lifting and/or holding a container or box engages muscles in the back, arms, shoulders, torso, core, hips and legs. It also puts the holder in an unbalanced position that can cause slips or falls as a holder holds the box and moves with it. When the holder's center of gravity is shifted, her body operates instantly to counteract such shift and to support the weight pulling upon the front of her body. Such weight pull is compensated by most of the user's major muscle groups and in particular those about her lower back and torso.
Corrugated paperboard is the primary material used in the manufacture of document boxes. Corrugated material, like many construction materials, continually increase in price, and there remains a need to reduce the amount of material used in a container box, to reduce the amount of wasted material during the manufacture of the box, to reduce the amount of material used in the box, and to reduce the cost for making reduced-material container boxes.